Membership

Do not edit this page. This page is the official process that Prishtina Hackerspace has agreed. If you wish to modify it, you should bring up your desired changes at a weekly meeting.

Members can come to Prishtina Hackerspace to hack and learn whenever they want. Members can bring their friends, colleagues, and collaborators to Prishtina Hackerspace to work on projects with them. At Prishtina Hackerspace, membership means taking responsibility and committing to help to maintain, improve, and govern Prishtina Hackerspace. As a member of Prishtina Hackerspace, you don't just come here to hack and learn, you actively work to improve what you see around you, help to deal with problems, and make this community better than it is today.

How to become a member

The first and most important step to join Prishtina Hackerspace is to simply come to a Meeting! We meet every Tuesday from 18:00 CET at Prishtina Hackerspace. (Location). Get to know us!

Join our mailing list on Google groups. This is where we have our daily on-line discussions.

Check out our Manual to understand the guidelines we use to function as a group.

Read our Bylaws and Membership details

Full rules for membership eligibility can be found in our non-profit's bylaws. Bylaws

Applying for membership

After you've finished the steps above, it's time for you to create an account on this wiki, edit your user page to introduce yourself as explained on People's page, remember you are still a guest.

Once you have your wiki page, you need to DOWNLOAD FORM,fill it up and send it to Prishtina Hackerspace.

Four Prishtina Hackerspace members will anonymously review your application and decide either to approve or not your membership.

Your acceptance will be communicated to you via email, and also on a Tuesday Open Meeting.

Once Prishtina Hackerspace has agreed to have you become a member, you will have to pay your dues.

Until you pay your dues, you are not going to be a member yet of Prishtina Hackerspace. If you have not arranged to pay your dues within thirty days of your agreement to have you as a member, you wont be able to be considered as a member, and must go through the joining process again.

Once Prishtina Hackerspace has agreed to have you as a member you have couple of things to do:

Make sure that your wiki user page is updated with the Role section, projects and other details you want to share about yourself.

Please send an email to Prishtina Hackerspace mailing list and make sure you introduce yourself there, our IRC channel and also in a Tuesday Open Meeting.

Welcome to our family!

Note: All members are in good standing except a member who has failed to pay his or her current monthly membership fee, or any other subscription or debt due and owing by the member to Prishtina Hackerspace, and the member is not in good standing so long as the debt remains unpaid.
Member dues may be waived for a three month period due to financial hardship or relocation by written letter to Prishtina Hackerspace that will be approved by the Senior members.

Eligibility

Any person of age 18 years old and older is eligible to become a member:

Completion and signature of your membership application form.

Your membership application form has passed the review process by four of our members.

Verification of your completed membership form by the Prishtina Hackerspace staff.

Timely payment of dues as determined by Prishtina Hackerspace.

Any person under 18, but older than 16 needs to follow the same process, however a parent or a guardian should be signing for you.

Persons under 16 are not eligible for a membership, but very welcomed to be our guests. Persons under 16 need to be always accompanied by an adult responsible for the person in word.

What you are paying for

Access to the space

Access to the extensive skills set and resources of the Prishtina Hackerspace members

Our members have a wide range of interests, hobbies, and professions - from server administration to welding, music and art. As a Member you will be able to learn from us, as well as have the opportunity to teach in return. To see some of the skills members have, check out the People page.

Access to public tools, additional services, and free classes

Voting rights (see also Types of membership below)

Members should be getting a @prishtinahackerspace.org email address and access to all other internet services.

Types of Membership

Regular Member

Regular Members enjoy the following privileges:

A key or other method of entry to the physical workspace.

Twenty-four hour access to the physical workspace.

Store a reasonable amount of equipment at the workspace.

Sponsor a qualified person for a Regular membership.

Senior Member

Being a Senior Member should be considered a privilege, you earn it!
All regular members are eligible to become Senior members upon being part of the family (regular member) for at least 4 months.

Senior membership is sponsored/voted by at least 4 other Senior members of Prishtina Hackerspace.

Senior Membership in addition to the Regular Membership gives you the following privileges:

Sponsor a qualified person for a Senior membership (Seniorship).

Eligibility to submit and authorize Funding Allocation Petitions

Eligibility to vote on any issue put before the membership.

Experimentation space on our servers online

Membership fees

Prishtina HAckerspace has two different fees for both Regular and Senior members:

10.00 EUR - Broke or so called Starving Hacker: Students and people under 18.

Note: Applicant should provide his/her Student ID.

15.00 EUR (or more, as desired) - Non-students, those who do have an income, are employed, or just want to contribute more to Prishtina Hackerspace.

Payments can be made via our ProCredit Bank Kosovo account (receipt needed), or even cash.

Membership responsibilities

Members must fulfill the following responsibilities:

Be excellent to each other!

Be excellent to each other is the guiding principle of Prishtina Hackerspace. Wikipedia uses a somewhat similar rule, which they call "the fundamental rule of all social spaces. Every other policy for getting along is a special case of it." Unlike Wikipedia, Prishtina Hackerspace takes a positive approach, and avoids the practice of officially enumerating the myriad potential special cases; "be excellent" is enough.

A member must thoughtfully contribute to Prishtina Hackerspace direction and policies.

A member must pay the monthly fee as determined by Prishtina Hackerspace.

A member must provide their details as required in the application form.

A member must keep his/her profile page updated

A member must consider participating and helping out in Prishtina Hackerspace activities

Please also read the general guidelines below!

General Guidelines

Talk to people and make friends. Part of the point of Prishtina Hackerspace is interpersonal interaction, and we want to meet you and learn about whatever cool project you're working on. It's amazing how often random discussions between people can result into things that show up on the world stage.

On the other hand, do be sensitive to people's desire to stop talking and start hacking. If someone starts looking away, returning to their laptop or project, or begins walking away, consider that you might be the Nth person to strike up a conversation with them, and they may want to actually get something done.

Pull your own weight. We don't have housekeeping service, so clean up after yourself and put things away when you're done. In fact, you're going to get a lot of good karma by tidying up twice the amount of space you use on a regular basis.

Everything in Prishtina Hackerspace is hackable. If you don't want something taken apart and turned into a giant robot the moment your back is turned, leave it on your shelf, or mark it clearly with your name, a way to contact you, the date, and what you're doing. Even then there are no guarantees -- it's just mildly rude to hack on a labelled thing unannounced, as opposed to positively encouraged.

If you find yourself having to explain something in the space more than once, you should probably label it.

If you can't throw something away in a full garbage can, you should probably empty it.

Bringing minors to Prishtina Hackerspace might result in them being exposed to ideas outside of your control, and you probably shouldn't bring them if that's going to be a problem.

Don't bittorrent from the space, it causes lots of problems for other people trying to use the network. Please don't download copyrighted content illegally using our Internet links.

If you're going to smoke, smoke outside of the building or on the balcony. Don't smoke inside!

Don't talk about politics or religion if you want to avoid conflict. Prishtina Hackerspace attracts a certain kind of personality that gets irate when they suspect someone thinks they're wrong, and even mentioning you support a different political or religious group than them can really push their buttons if they're having a bad day.

Taking stuff from the space temporarily without leaving a note with your contact info is a surefire way to cause problems.

Please ask before playing music through the public audio systems, especially if people are quietly enjoying the space.

Do not do anything at Prishtina Hackerspace or involving Prishtina Hackerspace which could affect a political election campaign, express or implied, incumbent or not.

Non members

We try to make sure our events are as open to the public as possible. Tuesday night meetings at 6pm are open to anyone. In addition we have workshops and other open events that anyone can attend. Generally, we have an open door policy to let anyone into the space to work. This is contingent on members being at the space to let you in. If you'd like to know if people are at the space, or arrange a time to visit, your best bet is to post to the Prishtina Hackerspace Google Group or ask anyone on IRC

If you are not a member you can still stay at the hackerspace and work on your project as far as a member is inside the space. If the member leaves, unfortunately you have to leave as well.

Those who use the space extensively are encouraged to look into membership or otherwise make donations to support the continued operation of Prishtina Hackerspace. Let it become a moral obligation, you should give what you get!